Enterprise teams that rely on Salesforce for CRM and Google Cloud for data infrastructure can now run AI-driven workflows across both platforms without migrating data or switching tools. Google Cloud and Salesforce announced the expanded AI agent partnership on April 22, 2026, at Cloud Next '26 in Las Vegas.
The deal enables AI agents to run end-to-end workflows across Slack, Google Workspace, Gemini Enterprise, and Salesforce Agentforce, with key capabilities including Gemini-powered reasoning, zero-copy access to Google Lakehouse, and new data connectors for BigQuery. Features are rolling out in phases across 2026, with some already generally available and others slated for late in the year.
What the Partnership Delivers
Customers can now deploy AI agents inside tools like Slack and Google Workspace, with Agentforce and Gemini Enterprise operating as the intelligence layer behind the scenes, allowing agents to work across systems, reduce risky data movement, and eliminate time lost to context switching.
Three workspace integrations are central to the announcement. The Slackbot integration allows users to generate Google Workspace content, including Docs, Slides, and Sheets, directly from a Slack conversation, pulling from Slack conversations to produce those files without leaving the messaging interface. Gemini Enterprise is now directly accessible within Slack as a search and assistant tool, capable of accessing connectors and related information from across connected apps, for example, summarizing a Google Meet transcript alongside a Slack thread. Third, Agentforce Sales agents can engage leads, create meeting briefs, surface deal risks and guidance, and manage pipeline and CRM updates in real time without ever leaving Gemini Enterprise.
Availability Timeline
Agentforce Sales in Gemini Enterprise is now available in Open Beta on the Gemini Enterprise Marketplace. Gemini Enterprise in Slack is now available in Private Preview on the Slack Marketplace. IDMC Google BigQuery Connectors are available in April 2026. Gemini-Powered Reasoning for Agentforce is slated for May 2026. The Slackbot Google Slides Generator is expected in mid-2026. Zero Copy with Google Lakehouse is expected late 2026.
Data Architecture: Zero Copy and Cross-Platform Reasoning
The data infrastructure changes represent a significant portion of the announcement. Under the Zero Copy with Google Lakehouse feature, Agentforce will be able to natively read data from Google Lakehouse with no copying, moving, or security risk. That capability is not yet live; it allows Agentforce to read data where it lives without copying or moving it, reducing security risk, and might be available in late 2026.
Gemini-powered reasoning for Agentforce gives the platform native support for Gemini models via the Atlas Reasoning Engine, enabling Agentforce to process text, image, and video formats while drawing from years of customer history to solve complex problems. More than 1,400 customers are already using Gemini within Agentforce.
New data connectors will also link Informatica data security policies and enterprise data sources like Workday and SAP into Google BigQuery. The Informatica connection additionally supports Apache Iceberg on Google Cloud Storage for large-scale dataset transformation and high-performance analytics.
Enterprise Deployments Cited
Both companies cited live enterprise deployments to support the announcement. Pepkor, a South African retail group, reported that unifying 64 million customer profiles into 24 million via Salesforce Data 360 and Google BigQuery enabled it to reach 25% more of its customer base with personalized engagement, without moving or copying data. James Lomas, Group CTO at Bionic, said Agentforce allows the company "to scale autonomous action across our entire enterprise." Fiona Tan, CTO of Wayfair, described the company as building an "Agentic Enterprise" embedding intelligent agents across operations from customer service to logistics, and named Salesforce and Google Cloud as key partners in that effort.
Executive Statements
Srini Tallapragada, President and Chief Engineering Officer at Salesforce, said: "Businesses are ready to go all in on agentic AI, and that requires infrastructure and models that can operate across the entire enterprise." Karthik Narain, Chief Product and Business Officer at Google Cloud, said the partnership "allows customers to securely connect data across both platforms to accelerate business results," adding that the enterprise-ready Salesforce agent in Gemini Enterprise gives customers "a powerful new way to act on their data with speed and confidence."
Implications for B2B Marketing and Analytics Teams
For enterprise marketing and analytics teams, the practical significance of the partnership centres on data unification without migration. Organizations running CRM data in Salesforce and analytics workloads in BigQuery have historically required data pipelines and copy-based integrations to connect the two, introducing latency, governance risk, and attribution gaps. The Zero Copy architecture, once generally available in late 2026, would allow AI agents to query live CRM data inside BigQuery-connected workflows without replication, a configuration that could materially improve attribution accuracy and audience segmentation fidelity. The IDMC connectors for Workday and SAP, available now in April 2026, extend the same logic to HR and ERP data sources, which are increasingly relevant inputs for B2B lead scoring and predictive marketing models.
Google Cloud's broader announcement at Cloud Next '26 confirmed zero-copy access extending to applications including Salesforce Data360, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, and Workday.
